Old Friends
by delano-averted
Summary: There's friendship. There's love. There's partners. There's hatred. And then there's them.


**Cowboy Bebop**

Of course they hadn't always hated each other. They'd been partners once. A relationship that was something somehow fragile but harsh and still beautiful, in its own twisted way. A chain forged link by agonizing link with blood and sweat (but never tears) and flesh and bullets, a chain that could never be broken. Something that might have been worth preserving once, before it became simply too much effort to keep up.

Adrenaline and harsh breathing in sync, running, matching his partner step-for-step, running all out and too strung out to laugh, but the laughter was there, crazy, maniacal, laughter in every step, in every drop of sweat, every glance sideways at his…Partner. Cohort. Rival.

A shared cigarette in the little downtime, or a bought drink, or a meal. That wink-wink-nudge-nudge, Good-Cop Bad-Cop act they play that works so very well. The swell of pride and amusement that comes when they're intimidating the hell out of someone, the crazy, wild-haired guy with the glint in his eye and the devil-may-care shitfaced smile, and his partner, pale, and white-haired but so dark and so very scary. They complement each other almost better than could be believed.

He's never so alive as he is when he's fighting with him—with him or against him, it doesn't matter, their skills complement each other so well that it's almost the same thing, whether they're fighting someone else (_poor soul, they'd never stand a chance) _or practicing against each other, sword (_and that's not fair_) against gun and fists (_I could say the same thing._) Elegant, efficient moves—attack and dodge and duck and thrust and pause, fall back, and catch that thin smile with a voiceless reply of your own; words are useless, because an entire conversation is spinning out in this fight…and attack again. Two bodies, one soul, or something like that, they're just the extension of another mind, just two weapons, there's a perverted synergy between them, linking them, it's why they work so well together but it's also why they hate each other.

Friends? The words are never said, but they're there, in every glance, every sticky situation, every time he has to carry him to the back-alley doctor because that dumb bastard's gone and gotten himself shot again because they work so well together that it's almost hard to imagine them apart. It's such a familiar scene that he knows his partner doesn't like to be scooped up like a blushing bride, even if his leg's broken, just swing a limp arm over a broad shoulder and match him step by step, focusing on the moment, because neither one has the imagination to think of a world without the other. And "don't die on me you crazy asshole, you've got to stay awake long enough to pay the dry cleaning bills for this fucking shirt that you're bleeding on" is just a euphemism for, "don't leave me, please, I wouldn't be able to live without you" because not only would the survivor have to get a new partner (that would be a drag), but their other half would also be missing. And could you really live with that?

Alone, they're impressive. The fluid, easy, almost careless, unbelievable martial arts style of the one, so at odds with his sardonic wit and his passionately wild smiles, or the violent energy of a cutting sword of the other, the thin lips drawn back in a smile that's all the more frightening because it's only ever seen in the middle of the fight, the fast moves and the whirling coat so very at odds with the cold face behind that vicious energy and that icy, wordless passion; put them together, the wild fighter and the cold swordsman, and it's a team made to order straight from hell.

He's lost track of the times he's had to go and pull _his_ ass out of trouble, as only he can do, because they've reached the point where no one else understands them quite well enough to do the job. There's no one else skilled enough to pull them out of a _situation_ except themselves (_and there's no one else they trust quite as much with their lives_).

And he's almost thankful when Julia comes between them, because then they don't have to face the unspoken question that have been rising. What are you to me? What am I to you? Just partners, or something more? (_Enemy? Friend?_) Because too many barriers are being broken in those long nights on stakeout, those seconds of fervent battle or those few moments when you're just relaxing in front of the television and in a thousand faceless bars, so in tune that words are useless and utterly meaningless; you're too close to me, too close to understanding what makes me tick and I can almost see through that cracked mask of yours. What I see scares me because it looks strangely familiar, like a mirror reflection of…myself.

They're enemies now (or ex-friends, once-allies, the memory just as sharp as the pain from the old scars), no doubt about it, not after the Syndicate and Julia and all those years apart. When they meet again it's like finding an old gun, the mechanism is a little rusty but it still works, it still kills, the partnership, that ineffable, unspeakable link is still there after all the hate and under all that anger. Unbreakable except by self-destruction.

And so they self-destruct, pulling each other down in the only way they know how, together.

And it's just like good old times again.

_Bang._


End file.
